Island Communities Adapt to Rising Seas

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Most studies on adaptation to sea-level rise suggest that residents will relocate as flooding worsens. But that didn't happen for four low-lying island communities in the central Philippines. Residents of those communities, which nowadays experience flooding during normal high tides, had access to a viable program to relocate them to the mainland, but they instead raised their floors with coral stones and built houses on stilts, according to a recent paper in Nature Climate Change. If the results hold elsewhere, social factors may prove key to whether people abandon coastal homes that get swamped from sea-level rise.

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